Guilty Pleasures by Laura Lee Guhrke EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Laura Lee Guhrke
- Language: English
- Genre: American Historical Romance
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Hampshire, 1830
No one who glanced at Daphne Wade would ever imagine that she had a guilty, secret pleasure.
Her countenance was plain, made more so by the spectacles perched on her nose. Her hair was light
brown and fashioned into a functional bun at the nape of her neck. All her dresses were varying
shades of beige, brown, or gray. Her height was average, and her figure was usually concealed
beneath a loose-fitting work apron of heavy canvas. Her voice was low and pleasant to the ear, with
nothing strident in its tone to evoke anyone’s attention.
No one judging her by her appearance would dream that Miss Daphne Wade had the rather
salacious habit of staring at her employer’s naked chest whenever she had the chance, although most
women would have agreed that Anthony Courtland, Duke of Tremore, had a chest worth looking at.
Daphne rested her elbows on the sill of the open window and lifted the brass spyglass. Using the
instrument was awkward when she was wearing her spectacles, so she pulled them off. After setting
the gold-rimmed pair on the windowsill, she once again raised the spyglass to her eye. Through its
lens, she scanned the archaeological site in the distance, searching for Anthony amid the workmen.
She always thought of him by his Christian name. In speech, she called him “your grace,” just as
everyone else did, but in her mind and her heart, he was always Anthony.
He was talking with Mr. Bennington, the excavation architect, and Sir Edward Fitzhugh, the
duke’s closest neighbor and quite the amateur antiquarian himself. The three men stood in a huge pit
of excavated ground amid the crumbling stone walls, broken columns, and other remnants of what
had once been a Roman villa. At the moment, they appeared to be discussing the mosaic pavements
beneath their feet that had been uncovered by the workmen that morning.
The moment she froze the spyglass on Anthony’s tall form, she felt that familiar twist of her heart,
that addictive mix of pleasure and discomfort. It was a combination that in his presence always tied
her tongue and compelled her to withdraw into herself until she seemed part of the furniture, but
when she watched him like this, she always longed to be the subject of his full attention. Love, she
thought, should be a pleasant thing, warm and tender, not something that hurt one’s heart by its
intensity.
Daphne felt that intensity now as she watched him. When in residence at Tremore Hall, he was
wont to spend two or three hours each day working alongside Mr. Bennington and the men on the
excavation. Sometimes, if she was not on the dig and he found the August afternoon exceptionally
warm, Anthony was compelled to remove his shirt. Today was a very warm day.
To Daphne, he almost seemed a part of the Roman excavation around him, for Anthony was one
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